Iowa: House panel debates elections bill | Quad-City Times

Iowa is one of the top states in the nation when it comes to elections and the Republican-controlled House State Government Committee approved an Election Modernization and Integrity Act its sponsor said will make it even better. The committee, which convened briefly at 3 p.m. Tuesday but didn’t begin discussion until after 7:30 p.m., continued debating past 11 p.m. whether the bill would, as Chairman Ken Rizer, R-Cedar Rapids, said, “make it easier to vote, harder to cheat and nobody will be turned away.” In the end, the committee voted 14-9 along party lines to approve the bill, making it eligible for consideration by the full House.

Mississippi: Early voting, online registration die in committee | Jackson Clarion-Ledger

House bills to allow early voting and online voter registration died without a vote in a Senate committee on Tuesday, frustrating House Elections Chairman Bill Denny. “They didn’t even take them up in committee,” said Denny, R-Jackson, who also authored both bills. “The Senate Elections chairwoman had said they were DOA. To me that’s almost insulting, to have our committee in the House pass these out two years in a row, then have them pass the full House with no more than two to four dissenting votes, and then the Senate committee not even discuss them, to announce that they are DOA before they even get them.”

New Mexico: A less automatic voter registration bill clears committee | The NM Political Report

An automatic voter registration bill lost a bit of what made it automatic, but moved on from the House committee that previously blocked it. State Rep. Daymon Ely, D-Albuquerque, was one of two Democrats to previously vote against the legislation in the House Local Government, Elections and Land Grant Committee. He explained after that vote that he voted against the bill initially so he could bring it off the table, citing a parliamentary rule, and reconsider the matter. The bill was previously tabled in the same committee. Ely brought the bill back Tuesday. After a very brief discussion, the committee passed the bill unanimously. “It looks complicated but it’s not,” sponsor Patricia Roybal-Caballero, D-Albuquerque, told the panel of the amendment.

North Carolina: Bill to match jury excuses with voter lists raises concerns | WRAL

A bill that would require clerks of court to report to the State Board of Elections the reasons some people have been excused from jury duty has raised concerns from local officials and some senators who worry people could be improperly excluded from voting. Senate Bill 60, which was debated but not voted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, and a companion measure represent the latest effort to take people who are ineligible to vote off the state’s voters rolls. To demonstrate the need for the measure, Sen. Joyce Krawiec, R-Forsyth, pointed to reports out of Ohio that non-citizens may have voted in recent elections. Her proposal is similar to bills that have been filed in prior sessions.

Texas: Voter ID law back in court after Justice Department pulls out | San Antonio Express-News

Lawyers for the state of Texas argued during a court hearing in Corpus Christi on Tuesday that the Legislature did not act with discriminatory intent when it passed a voter ID law that has since been struck down, but they also told a judge that lawmakers will make fixes to it in the current Legislative session. Critics, however, said the proposed changes, if passed in newly introduced legislation, are irrelevant to the discriminatory purpose behind the 2011 law’s passage. Plaintiffs that include civil rights groups asked U.S. District Judge Mary Nelva Gonzales Ramos to hold the state accountable. The groups argue that the Texas law has the potential to keep 600,000 voters, mostly African-Americans and Hispanics, away from the polls. They point, for example, to a provision that allows Texas voters to use hunting licenses as identification, but not student identification cards.

Washington: Senate OKs bill to add hundreds of ballot drop boxes in state | Everett Herald

A Monroe lawmaker’s bill that could more than double the number of ballot drop boxes in Washington is on its way to the state House after sailing through the Senate. On Monday, senators approved the legislation 49-0 with Republicans and Democrats predicting it will boost participation of voters by making it easier for them to return their ballots. “This is really important for people in the rural areas,” said Sen. Kirk Pearson, R-Monroe, the bill’s sponsor. Many constituents in his 39th Legislative District must travel a long distance to find a box to return ballots postage-free, he said. Otherwise they need to use a stamp to mail in their ballots and that is like a poll tax, Pearson contended.

France: ‘Oui on peut!’ French voters want Obama to run for president | France 24

Posters of Barack Obama have popped up around Paris in what started as a joke by four friends calling for the former US president to run for the Élysée Palace. The organisers say they began plastering Obama posters around Paris because they were disenchanted with the homegrown candidates in France’s forthcoming presidential election. While the posters read “Oui on peut”, the French translation of Obama’s “Yes we can” slogan, the US president cannot run in France’s presidential election as a foreigner. And yet more than 42,000 people have already signed an online petition linked to the poster campaign, calling for the 44th US president to become the 25th president of the French Republic.

India: Maha Civic Polls Show EVMs May Be ‘Easily Vulnerable Machines’ | The Quint

On the evening of 23 February, an unexpected development shocked Maharashtra as counting for local body polls in the state was ending. Violence erupted in Panchavati in the heart of Nashik city following complaints of tampering of EVMs (electronic voting machines). The city BJP chief’s son was declared the winner from the ward, but the Shiv Sena claimed that the total of the votes received by each candidate exceeded the total number of votes cast. This led to clashes between Shiv Sena and BJP workers in the streets. Soon, mobs began vandalising and burning vehicles. Police had to resort to lathi-charge and firing in the air to disperse the crowd of 800 people. Nine policemen, as well as some local residents, were injured in the rampage.

Macedonia: U.S. diplomats backing Balkan republics against suspected Russia meddling | Los Angeles Times

Even as President Trump seeks to improve relations with Russia, the State Department is countering overtures by Moscow in one of its former satellite regions, the Balkans. State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Tuesday called for Macedonia, one of the former republics of the now-defunct Yugoslavia, to urgently put together a government. This comes after the former prime minister of neighboring Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, accused Russia of meddling in the region and attempting to provoke a coup against Montenegro’s pro-Western government last fall. Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina have expressed strong interest in joining the European Union and possibly the NATO military alliance, but Russia has opposed those moves.

Russia: Pamfilova Takes Daghestan’s Leaders To Task Over Vote-Rigging | RFERL

Reporting to Russian President Vladimir Putin last September on the conduct of the State Duma elections, Ella Pamfilova, chair of Russia’s Central Election Commission, singled out Daghestan as one of the federation subjects where irregularities were most blatant and prevalent. Pamfilova elaborated on that assessment during meetings in Makhachkala two weeks ago with the republic’s leaders, journalists, and representatives of various political parties, publicly warning republic head Ramazan Abdulatipov that “we do not need inflated statistics” that undermine voters’ trust in the electoral process. Daghestan was one of several Russian regions where elections to the regional parliament and local councils were held concurrently with those to the State Duma. According to official statistical data, at all three levels voter turnout was significantly higher than for Russia as a whole, and candidates representing the ruling United Russia party won with a disproportionately large percent of the vote (88.86 percent in the State Duma election compared to 47.8 percent nationwide, and 75.51 percent in the regional parliamentary ballot.)